Part of our St. Patrick’s Day party plan this weekend was crafts for the kids. Unfortunately we didn’t get to do much crafting between swimming and tadpole chasing time and dinner but since I had the stuff I decided to do the crafts with my girls anyways, so we’ve spent the past few days crafting away!
The one craft we did get to during the party that all the kids loved was green pepper clover printing. It’s so ridiculously easy! All you do is cut the top/bottom off of a pepper (I used bottoms because they were better shaped, you want bottoms that have 4 sections for a clover or 3 for a shamrock), dip it in some green paint and use it like a stamp. I did have to add “handles” to mine since I used bottoms (I stuck some wire Christmas ornament hangers into the middle of the pepper) but none of my peppers had stems anyways!
Sunday morning I decided to do a crafting breakfast with the girls. I put out a bowl of Fruit Loops, some sqeezy icing, marshmallows and paper plates. The girls snacked as they made Fruit Loop rainbows using the icing as glue and the marshmallows as clouds. Honeybun had the idea to also use the mint chocolate marshmallows as grass and pots of gold. As you can see, Honeybun went with a traditional rainbow whereas Sugarplum took a more avant-garde approach!
Sugarplum and I also made yarn wrapped clovers, similar to the hearts we made for Valentine’s Day. I cut clover shapes out of plastic canvas and then used green and white variegated yarn to wrap the shape. These were much trickier than the hearts so would better suit older children. I did learn a few new tricks though. For starters, make sure you cut the shape without smooth edges, this is the benefit of the plastic canvas, you can cut just inside the lines to make jaggedy parts for the yarn to catch on. I also made a hanging loop to start this time by threading the end of the yard through one of the top holes and knotting it then wrapped over the knot and end!
I also found a super cute pot of gold craft using a hand print for the rainbow. While the one I based mine off of used a construction paper pot and wrappers from chocolate coins (like this), I decided to try doing it all with their hands. I painted each finger a different color for the rainbow, did their palm along their fingers with gold and then the rest of their palm black. I then had them press their hands on a small canvas. Honeybun we had to do twice because the first colors I applied had already dried but we were able to just reapply and press again on top of the original. They didn’t come out perfect since the dimensions of their hands were a bit odd for the picture I was going for, but I still think they are darn cute and will display them proudly each and every St. Patrick’s Day from now on!
